White Liberals: We'll Say Who the Racists Are

Karl Lueger was the mayor of Vienna at the turn of the century, whose populist politics were often riven with anti-semtism -- so much so that he was cited as an inspiration by none other than Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf.

However, there's a debate about how anti-semitic he actually was, and how much of an anti-semite he pretended to be for the sake of political positioning.

Lueger is famous for an answer he once gave on this issue. He was asked how he squared that fact that many of his policies were anti-semitic, while he counted many Jews among his close friends.

"I decide who is a Jew," he said, apparently creating his own definition of Judaism.

This flexible opinion on "who is a Jew" permitted him to both debase himself (and Vienna) with populist politics of hatred while simultaneously carving out a space for himself to consort with the Hated Other, as he might choose.

Similarly, today, White "liberals" have decided to sell out liberalism to the leftist, totalitarian goons of the Progressive Speech Police. They'll join the Progressives' hate campaigns against free speech and free thought -- but only when those campaigns are directed towards non-liberals.

Playing to the Progressive mobs just like Luegar played to the Vienna ones, White Liberals reserve themselves the power to both traffic in hateful intolerance, and except themselves and their friends from the claims they otherwise inflict on others.

They, and they alone, will decide who the Racists are.

I was trying to figure out my thoughts on the Suey Park/#CancelCobert conflagration on the podcast (and doing a poor job at it). But I think I have now unmuddled my thoughts on this.

In case you don't know, Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins, has created an organization to funnel money to American Indians. It's called "The Washington Redskins Foundation for Original Americans."

It's obviously intended to buy off the rage of the grievance mongering left -- but I don't see what the objection is to that. After all, the left mongers grievances precisely so that deep-pocketed organizations can be pressured into buying them off. It's the whole point of the racket.

Dan Snyder, then, stands accused by the left of going along with the left's agenda.

Steven Colbert, who isn't funny but says things that please his trained seal leftist audience, attempted to parody Snyder's attempt to do what the left wants (pay the a rent for their feigned outrage). He did a bit in which he played an old clip of a "character" he used to do in 2005 named "Ching Chong Ding Dong," a deliberately offensive Asian stereotype.

The purpose of this original use of racial humor was, I guess in his mind, to parody Bill O'Reilly's racial insensitivity. Or something. I've never heard Bill O'Reilly do "characters," whether racially insensitive or not, so I don't know exactly what was going on in Colbert's head when he trotted out this fairly offensive bit of throwback, oldschool racism.

Note right here that Colbert relies on his intent as his Get Out of Jail Free Card for doing this bit. While his bit was preposterously racially insensitive, it was also preposterously racially insensitive -- he is so over-the-top in his racism that he believes that over-the-toppedness should signal to the viewer that he's not on the level, and that his intent is to satirize racism itself, and not to attack Asians.

Intent -- it all comes down to his intent. If his intent is permissible, it doesn't matter how fantastically racist he seems to be, trading, as he does, in ethnic slurs that really are tossed at Asian kids as they're growing up. ("Ching chong" and variants are used as catcalls against Asians.)

That's the whole theory as to why Colbert is permitted to do this, and you're not. His intent is pure. His intent is not to demean Asians, but to demean crochety old Asian-haters like, um, Bill O'Reilly.

Now, Colbert's new bit consisted of replaying this hoary Yellowface act and then issuing a mock apology, saying that, like Dan Snyder, he would start a foundation to placate angry Asians. And this foundation would be called "The Ching Chong Ding Dong Foundation to Help Orientals or Whatever."

Again, he relies upon the idea that the intent beneath his words removes his words from the category of "offensive," even though the words, on their own, are in fact, inarguably, offensive.

And you can ask Asians about that. They will tell you they've had the Ching Chong thing thrown at them at children, and that epithet was intended to hurt them, and much of the time, it actually did hurt them.

But again: Colbert's intent rescues this remark. He doesn't mean anything bad by it, after all.

But think about that. He's attacking Dan Snyder's supposedly offensive use of "Redskins" for his team name. And doing so using 1910s era coolie-jokes to do so. But Colbert's intent must be considered here. After all, he's just ripping Dan Snyder.

Obviously no one names a sports club after something they think is substandard, or shoddy, or weak, or useless. People always object to the Redskins name by using the same example -- "Well, what would you say if someone named his baseball team the New York N*****s, huh?"

But that's stupid. No one does that. No one would do that. Because "N****r" is inherently a demeaning term, and a hateful one, and no one -- no one -- names their sports clubs after things they hate.

They name them after things they respect, or wish to emulate, or wish to associate themselves with. Thus the large number of teams named after great cats, and bears, and stallions, and even the gee-whiz technology of the 50s (jets, rockets).

And as for clubs named after types of people, all those people have a positive association; in football, especially, a martial-themed sport if there ever was one, those positive associations all have to do with virility and deadliness in battle:

Vikings.

Raiders.

Buccaneers.

Warriors.

Fighting Irish.

Spartans.

You do not see "The San Francisco Coolie Laborers" in the lists of any sports teams, nor the "Boston Drunken Irish Wife-Batterers." All team names are tributes to the group in the nickname.

Some team names implicitly specify a race/ethnicity -- Vikings, Fighting Irish. There is no commotion over this -- people understand that when someone names a team the "Vikings," they mean it a positive way. They are speaking of the fury of the Northmen -- and not, for example, their propensity to rape and reduce much of Europe to a constant Twilight in which civilization could never advance too far before being pillaged and raped into rubble.

Nor does anyone seriously think "the Fighting Irish" is really about the Irish's well-known tendency to over-indulge in alcohol and then get their Irish up. (Oh, what a giveaway.) And that one really does actually step right on up to the line of being a slur against the Irish -- but we understand the intent behind it is playful, and positive. (Mostly.)

In fact, White Liberals currently on their jihad against the name "Redskins" make an exception for other teams with Indian nicknames-- Braves, Chiefs, Indians, all okay. Not racist, the White Liberals have decided, although it's unclear how they've come to this conclusion.

All three names, after all, do reference a specific race -- Native Americans -- just as surely as "Redskins" does, and for the exact same reasons.

But White Liberals know the difference. White Liberals can tell you who the Racists are.

Now, I don't really care too much about whether the Redskins keeps its historic name, to be honest with you. Dan Snyder is not my friend and I have no allegiance to him.

My point is that White Liberals will explain to you, dripping with condescension, sopping with superiority, that Steven Colbert's racist joke was just a joke and you need to get over it because his intent was permissible, and yet campaign in this endless jihad against the "Redskins" name, this time forgetting altogether to factor in the "intent" part of the analysis.

No, in this case, intent won't save them -- it's a zero-tolerance, single-factor analysis. If the word is potentially offensive, it has to go.

And yet "Ching Chong Ding Dong" is defended as having important social value.

What I'm getting at is this: Progressives are pushing for strict-liability, zero-tolerance, single-factor Speech Policing, and they make no bones about it-- many have recently questioned the value of Free Speech, and compared it, very unfavorably, to the much more important value of Social Justice.

Liberals, on the other hand, pretend to care about things like free thought and free speech. The trouble is, they are in a joined-at-the-hip political alliance with the Progressives, who are, in reality, just socialist fascists.

So how do White Liberals square this circle, wishing to appease their foaming-at-the-mouth Progressive Thought Police allies while simultaneously convincing themselves that they, unlike the Progressives or the (spit) Conservatives, support actual liberalism in matters of speech and thought?

Well, they manage this balancing trick the way Karl Lueger did: They decide who the racists are.

White Liberals, and White Liberals alone, will decide when context and intent will be weighed in the balance to rescue someone's words (as in the case of an important White Liberal ally like Steven Colbert), or when context and intent will be jettisoned from the analysis entirely, and the Progressives' zero-tolerance no-exception rule will be applied instead (as in the case of a 1%-er businessman like Dan Snyder).

They will get to make this decision -- and they'll employ the Vindictive Standard (zero tolerance) against their own political enemies (conservatives), and yet shoot the Vindictive Standard down as childishly silly when Progressives demand it be enforced against a fellow White Liberal.

Progressives say: It doesn't matter what someone's alleged "intent" is, all that matters is whether someone felt hurt or demeaned by words.

The White Liberal agrees -- so long as that rule is being applied against their common enemy, conservatives.

But when Progressives demand that it also be applied to White Liberals In Good Standing like Alec Baldwin or Steven Colbert, suddenly White Liberals start talking about "intent" and "context" and other such nuances.

If Bill O'Reilly treated an aggrieved minority activist with half the level of sneering dismissal this White Liberal HuffPo guy does, MSNBC's programming would be all set through June.

You might agree that she's silly -- and that's your right. But consider, between her and her White Liberal Male interviewer, she's the one actually being consistent here. I don't agree with her standards, but she is maintaining her standards, whether the person offering the offensive speech is liberal or conservative.

The White Liberal Male interviewer, on the other hand, wishes to decide, after consultation with his White Liberal colleagues, which standard he will apply to a situation -- the flexible liberal one, or the censorious, draconian progressive one -- according to whether the speaker of the offensive words is a White Liberal (to be protected in solidarity) or a White Conservative (to be attacked with none of this absurd "intent" business muddying the analysis).

I don't agree with anything Suey Park says, except this much: She's right, the White Liberals are flagrantly inconsistent on this, and absurdly hypocritical and principle-free, joining in her Zero Tolerance Outrage when it suits the White Liberal Cause, and treating her like a babbling idiot when she insists that the standard White Liberals have previously endorsed also be applied to White Liberals.

The White Liberal Male interview has never heard something so absurd -- why, he's a White Liberal. By definition, he's doing the Right Thing at all times. Who is this stupid Korean girl to tell him different?

If Suey Park says she was offended by these words, What does it matter what Colbert's "satirical intent" might have been?

White Liberals agree with this... so long as they're not the ones subject to the Vindictive Standard. As soon as they're the target of it -- or one of their allies is the target of it -- suddenly we hear White Liberals expressing doubts about this crude formulation of the rule.

So I do think Suey Park has a point, here. And she is being demeaned and dismissed by White Liberals who are absolutely certain that they're constitutionally incapable of being racist, or even giving inadvertent racial offense -- so if some stupid minority is bothered by something a White Liberal says, that's her problem. She just needs to put on her Big Girl Pants and stop crying about it.

So White Liberals, it turns out, get to be the arbiters of what is and isn't racist... on behalf of their non-white political confreres.

Speaking of which: Here's another thing Suey Park is right about.

Why do White Liberals still dominate Liberal Media? Whites are about 75% of the nation, but they're nowhere near 75% of the liberal/progressive alliance. Almost 60% of all whites voted for Romney in 2012 -- making White Liberals a minority group (compared to Minority Liberals) in the liberal/progressive alliance.

So why are they still in almost all the positions of power?

White Liberals are a minority in the liberal/progressive alliance; why do minority leftist have to go begging to White Liberal gatekeepers in the media to make their voices heard?

Why do White Liberals still get to decide, on behalf of Korean-Americans, which ethnic slurs they should and shouldn't be offended by?

How is it that every liberal outfit still has a masthead that's 96% Ivory Soap White?

Is that racist?

Why no, the White Liberals will tell you-- We decide who The Racists are.